Perfect killer

CHAPTER 60

Dan Gabriel squinted against the gusting wind and made his way along the treelined sidewalk of Higuera Street toward the heart of old San Luis Obispo. Tourists and summer-school students from Cal Poly jammed the sidewalks along with an army of panhandlers trolling for spare change.

The street threw off heat like a griddle. The wind had shifted since his run and howled in now from the east, a Santa Ana, wind special-delivering desert heat and Central Valley pollution. A Santa Ana often sparked forest fires and tempers.

Dan felt the dark spots grow around his armpits and soak through the lower back of his knit shirt. He stopped for the light at Osos. At the foot of a shade tree, a battered old man with undisciplined hair and a matted beard coaxed a ragged tune from his guitar. Gabriel hesitated for a moment, then recognized a man in far worse shape than he was. The light changed. Dan pulled a five from his wallet, dropped it in the man's open guitar case, and stepped off the curb to cross the street.

Half a block down, Gabriel pushed open the glass door of the Chinese buffet and made his way to the host's podium. High-backed, leatherette booths, dark walls, dim lighting, and a massive steam table dominated the center of the roam. Gabriel needed this dim anonymity to conduct a meeting that didn't happen. He looked at his watch. Noon straight-up.

The host seated a couple of elderly ladies with flowered dresses, refilled the iced tea glass of a lone student with a thick textbook, and finally made his way toward Gabriel. Suddenly a waving hand emerged from the shadows across the room, then the dim outline of a familiar face.

Dan waved back, nodded his greetings to the host, then made his way to shake Jack Kilgore's outstretched hand.

"You're looking trim these days, General." Kilgore's voice carried a deep, booming authority that inspired fear or confidence depending on whose side you were on.

"Thanks," Gabriel said as he slid into the booth facing Kilgore. "General."

"Yeah, hell, they'll probably take the freaking star if I tell the padded asses at the Pentagon to stuff it one more time, now that I don't have you and Braxton as my point men."

Gabriel's laugh was genuine.

Jack Kilgore had been a member of Task Force 86M for nearly fifteen years and its commander for five. He had been Gabriel's first and only choice for the top slot. Kilgore had a reputation for cutting through BS to get a job done. Right. The first time. But his disdain for paperwork and bureaucracy had earned him enemies among the paper-pushers. His bold operational plans made others nervous and branded him a cowboy.

"It only looks risky when you don't understand the situation," Kilgore explained time and again. "And the upholstered assholes in Washington don't have enough combat experience to understand which end of their freaking M16 gets pointed which way." Kilgore had an enormous capacity to hold every single one of the important elements of a situation in his head all at the same time and to look at things as a whole rather than just piece by piece.

Few officers had this gift, and that was one of the two reasons Dan had called on Kilgore. The other was obviously firepower and intel.

"You're right," Gabriel said when the lightness of his laughter gave way to the real reason for the meeting. "But that's not why I called."

"Didn't think so."

"Like I said before, this is a conversation we never had."

"Most of my conversations these days are like that," Kilgore said. "Problem is sometimes I can't remember whether I forgot a conversation because I was supposed to or because I'm getting old." He smiled, but Gabriel didn't pick up on it.

"We have a problem which may need some extracurricular activity."

"Uh-huh. Another training mission?" Kilgore used his fingers to put quotes around training.

"Maybe. It's about a secret operation called Project Enduring Valor." Dan waited for a look of recognition, but got only a frown. "It's a high-priority effort. Braxton says it's got some bad history."

"How bad?"

"Enough to blow his presidential bid out of the water."

Kilgore made a low whistle. Then: "You hungry?"

"A little."

"It sounds like you're going to need some time to fill me in." Dan nodded.

"You paying?"

Gabriel nodded.

"Then I'm hungry too."

Kilgore slid out of his seat and headed for the buffet. Gabriel followed him.

For the next forty-five minutes over food made banal enough for the average middle-American palate, Dan laid out the situation. Kilgore ate quietly, rarely interrupted, as he absorbed the connection between the illegal experiments, My Lai, Frank Harper, and Braxton's head wound.

Kilgore stopped eating entirely when Dan related the details of the soon-to-bedeployed Xantaeus patches.

When Dan ran out of words, Kilgore looked at him in silence for several moments.

"You're sitting right on top of a drum of fuggy old nitroglycerin, aren't you?"

Gabriel nodded. "And I have to make a decision in the next seventy-two hours. There's a huge series of meetings at the General's-"

"He still calling it Castello Da Vinci?"

Gabriel nodded.

Kilgore frowned. "That's awfully pretentious."

"But it looks awfully good on a wine label."

"Whoopee-do. Everybody and their yard boy up there has their own wine label."

"Not on a bottle selling for five hundred dollars and up-if you're lucky enough to find one for sale."

"Still-"

"Yeah, I'm with you on all that wine porn crap." Gabriel paused to drain the last sips of his iced tea. When it was gone, he rattled the ice around in the glass before continuing.

"General Braxton's hosting a series of top-level meetings over the next three days. Some relate to the campaign, some are social and fundraising events. There's one that Braxton has been tight-lipped about, and I'm sure it's about Project Enduring Valor."

Kilgore nodded as he turned his concentration on chasing a chow mein noodle around his plate with his chopsticks. Finally, he gave up and raised his face to met Gabriel's eyes. "Lord, lord." Kilgore shook his head and rubbed at his chin. "My experience has been that the General is rarely wrong about military matters." "Therein lies the problem."

"On the other hand, I may have heard about this Stone fellow," Kilgore said. "You and I live in a pretty small world. We're talking ancient history, but it's easy enough to check out."

"Soon?"

"This afternoon." Kilgore took a bite of moo shoo pork and washed it down with iced tea. "You've never been this spooked before, old son. You've got to put on your operational hat or you're going to get hurt."

Gabriel nodded.

"Well, besides Stone, the ultimate hard choice we have to make on the usual incomplete information concerns the Xantaeus issue and Braxton's connection." Kilgore paused to study the ceiling. "Genies don't go back into their bottles." He shook his head. "Nukes came out and stayed. CBW. The chemical warrior ain't crawling back inside either. Braxton's right about making sure we win the wars."

Gabriel opened his mouth, but Kilgore held up his hand.

"On the other hand, if the effects are not completely reversible-even if a tenth of one percent never come out of it-we have a national disaster, a whole new class of highly capable killers who can't turn it off. Maybe a lot of them who look normal and act normal, but in the end what we could end up with are bunch of domestic My Lais."

Gabriel nodded.

"But you might be wrong. You could be contravening a decision when you don't have as much data as Braxton has. It's a command thing."

"Braxton's not in the military anymore and neither am I."

"Technically you're correct. But in reality, were in a war for the soul and security of this country. It's never been in greater danger. And brave, good people like this Stone fellow do get killed in a war, sometimes they have to be sacrificed. It's not right, but sometimes it's the only alternative.

"Now, mind you, I'm not yet convinced the General's right. However, if we play the odds, we both know his judgment has been vindicated so many times I can't think of the last time he was wrong."

"Bothers me too," Gabriel said.

"Good! Absolute certainty's killed more people than informed ambiguity, which means we have to take the ball the General has handed off and run with it until and unless we find we're headed toward the wrong goalposts."

"What if we don't realize it until it's too late?"

Kilgore gave him a broad smile. "You've been pushing a desk way too long, old buddy."